School, Surf, Temples...the usual

Another stupendous week in Peru has passed me by already!    Teaching has been really fun.  Eppy and I make quite the team at the La Cantera school. I really appreciate teaching the younger students, they appreciate my goofy demeanor.  They also seem more interested in learning English.  The schools are so absolutely basic here.  We are in the desert so the school grounds basically consist of some cement buildings for classrooms, and a lot of sand, all enclosed in a big concrete wall.  The town of esperanzas is dirty brick buildings with corrugated tin rooves, scrappy street dogs, dusty dirt streets, piles of rubble brick everywhere, mountains in the background and slow walking peruvians.  The combis always swerve from left to right to avoid the complete uneveness of the streets.  But it all works, people are happy, the children smile and love to play with us, everyone gets to where they are going.  I love riding the combis to and from school, reading the signs of random businesses, observing the street vendors and daily lives, the shouts of the combi man as he yells out his destinations rapidfire, random grafitti, and this incredible mosaic tile wall that about 1000 yards long by the university, they{ve been working on it for ten years, and still are. It depicts the history of Peru, Its amazing i will have to take some pics.  on a side note, university is free in peru....some third world huh? they{ve figured out what we havent.

     The week was filled with classes and food. It seems that when we are not teaching we are eating, or talking about what-where we will be eating next. There was a vegetarian restuarnat iwas excited to try. I drug Jack, Holly, Adrienne, and Sarah with me.  Alas though, it was not that great.  Dang, We did have some amazing pizzas at the Casona Deza restaurante inside this beatiful historic house. I had the best Chicha Morada so far there.  Food is everywhere here, it seems every ten feet there is another sandwich board on the sidewalk with a menu for a restaurant.   Not to mention, random street vendors selling anythingfrom fresh fruit to hamburgers and my new fave raspadillas. Its like a slushy, but instead of strange artificially colored crap, its these wonderful thick fresh fruit syrups.  I love the maracuya syrup(passion fruit). 

        We all went to cheap movie night on Tuesday. Its funny becaue everywhere we go, we go with like 10 people in tow, between volunteers, students and friends.  The popcorn bucket at the movies is ridiculous!  They say american portions are crazy, >I have never seen such a bin of popcorn!  Also, they will come and take your food order while youre in the seats, and come back with your popcorn, how has america not done this?  We watched the brad pitt flick Fury. It was okay, life is tense enough so i dont prefet to watch downer movies, but i{m glad i had the experience of a movie night in peru.  

   Thursday Eppy and I taught action verbs to the kids, and had a blast doing some silly games with them. After class I was invited to go to a small school to talk to the kids and help them practice there English. My friend Ellen invited me and picked me up to take me there.  The room was cute and tidy and the students all quite nervous to talk to me. It was fun though, communicating in smiles and trying to drag some answers out of them. They were quite interested in what music i liked, but they didn{t know who the beatles were....dang. A good experience though, that left me floating.  That night we all went to the beach for cheap cocktail night.  We listened to the live reggae band and enjoyed mojitos...And stayed out until four in the morning...doing what? who knows... dancing, chatting excitedly in our mixtures of english, spanish, french and spanglish, walking and drinking on the beach. It was a grand night, and I got to ride on Emma{s boyfriends Tito{s motorbike, yeah, I love motorbikes!

        Friday was Jack and Hollys last day, so we headed back to the beach to share a dinner, and a nice sunset together.  They are heading off to Brazil for Carnaval, and then skydiving over the worlds biggest waterfalls tomorrow.  We spent there last night in Trujillo hanging out in the park and telling stories. We will miss you guys!

      Saturday I spent the day at the beach, doing some sun bathing and swimming. Sarah and I also bought our own bus tickets to Carnaval. We are staying in Peru however, in Cajamarca.  Apparently its the best place to celebrate in Peru.  We have found a couchsurfer to stay with and are excited to go!  I can{t believe that my time here is almost over though. I was planning on staying for 3ish weeks, but since i{m going to carnaval i{m already heading north, so i{m just going to keep on going.  I have had so much fun with espaanglisch, and i{m going to miss having so much support, and friendly people around me. I{m also ready to see some more of Peru, and be independent too.

      Sunday I did something that i{ve wanted to do forever. I{m a bit embarassed because i lived in southern california for three years and i never went surfing, nope, not once. My boyfriend even surfed...but i never got to go.  So Adrienne and Janna (new volunteer) and I went surfing with Luciano and Antonio, our instructors.  It was a blast! thanks to yoga, I was quite a natural, and stood up quickly. I know i have a lot to learn, but it was super duper fun. I love the sea so much, and this was just a ridiculously fun way to interact with it!.I am so glad i went, it was one of my goals while i was in Peru. I spent the rest of the day lazing on the beach with Eppy and enjoying that display. The beach was packed with smiling happy peruvians. Vendors wandered the beach selling, cotton candy, chips, these sweet orange cakes with crispy layers and honey, and ...caramel apples? Sure why not?  

       Today we went to do some ancient Moche ruin exploration.  Eppy, Adrienne, Janna and I took a taxi to the Huacas del sol y luna(the temples of the sun and the moon).  Huge Adobe brick ruins of a society built almost 2000 years ago.  The taxi dropped us off way to early (JERK)¡ Although as we were walking we were picke up by some nice fellows in a pick up. Yes¡ I have now hitchhiked in 4 countries!They took us all the way to the museum. The museum was full of pottery and I had such a great time looking at it. So much about there life was learned by the stories depicted on the pottery.  One of the tombs that was unearthed was a potters tomb. Potters were considered and elite upperclasss in Moche society. Yeah, me too right :D?  I do love this strange connection i feel between myself and all pottery i come in contact with.  The murals and reliefs painted on the walls of the temples were also quite incredible. The scale of the adobe structure is massive! So many bricks, and each is marked with a special symbol as a signature of the maker.  Quite a week!  Now i{m about to go teach a Gringlish class. I love and miss all of you.  Leave a comment won{t you? Any questions? Comments? Concerns? Threats? just kidding!